men, who love their wives and children, to look upon secret orders which thus swallow the wages of the poor, and rob women and babes under the pretense of charity?

"You

But the initiations, dues, and uniform expenses are far from being the only items of secret society expense. It is well known that lodges in general have dances and banquets to which the members are expected to contribute by the purchase of tickets. I knew of one such ball, which, being arranged by city office holders and dry goods clerks, was intended to be quite exclusive. Tickets were sold at ten dollars. A Mason who was earning honest bread at a blacksmith's anvil said to his wife: have never attended such a ball, and you shall have a chance to go." He bought the tickets, and gave his wife a hundred dollars for her dress. He told her if that was insufficient to come for more. The man with a true husband's pride said to "If I do say it she was as handsome a woman as there was on that floor." But the ball had been arranged in such a way as to keep out just such persons, and the élite were indignant that a "blacksmith" should break into their aristocratic circle; and they took care to make both him and his wife understand that they were not wanted. He said: 66 I have never been in a lodge since and I shall never go again." This fact admirably illustrates the sham fraternity of lodgism, but it is mentioned for another purpose. All over the United States such dances

me:

are held, year after year, and, while the exact truth cannot be ascertained, it is evident that the expense must aggregate a

vast sum.

Of course, the fact that a thing is costly does not at all prove that it is injudicious to invest in it. We buy food and clothing and fuel and houses. We buy books and papers, pictures and statuary. That which strengthens the body, enlightens the mind, purifies the heart, or in any way uplifts men, may, under proper circumstances, be wisely purchased. But for men to unite in lodges, from which their wives and children are excluded, and spend their time in such exercises as killing and raising Hiram Abiff or going about with masks on or trying to scare some poor foolish man by making him think that he is

to jump upon a bed of iron spikes, to keep up this mixture of sacrilege and buffoonery at an expense of millions of dollars which their families need, is little short of a crime.

Of course, it will be said that men have a right to spend their own money as they please, and that it is the business of no one else what they do with it. It is evident that this statement is untrue. No man has a right to take money which his family need and pay it for a lodge oyster supper. No man has a right to take money which his child should have for schooling and pay it out for a uniform in which he may play that he is a "Knight." No man has a right to take God's tithe and pay it out for a dance, where with godless men and women he may forget that he is a rational being on the way to judgment. Men are under obligation to use their property so as to do the greatest good, and they have no right to waste it in personal gratification without reference to those dependent upon them.

There are many persons who have not made a careful study of the secret society problem who assert that the subject is unworthy of serious thought. They consider lodge exhibitions simply the vanity and folly of weak-minded men who must do something, and who might as well be occupied in "working" degrees or marching about with gauntlet gloves, a cocked hat, a feather, and a sword as anything else. They say that the whole thing is a wasteful, needless expense, but it is no worse than eating tobacco, or indulging in many other expensive and injurious habits that men form. Persons holding these views generally insist that those who are hostile to secret organizations are needlessly alarmed; and that, like epidemic diseases among children, the lodge rash will pass over each generation of young men, leaving them none the worse for temporary outbreak of grandiloquent titles and regalia.

Unfortunately there are many facts which contradict this optimistic view of the present situation. If this were the case, why have such men as John Quincy Adams, William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, Charles G. Finney, Daniel Webster, William Wirt, Joseph Cook, D. L. Moody, Dr. Munhall, and others of like standing condemned them so decidedly? Are those men

above named who still live weak-minded and silly persons who are likely to be needlessly alarmed? Were those of them who are dead inferior in their time to the average of their fellows? These men have said, and thousands of others believe that secret societies are dangerous to the individuals composing them, to individuals outside of them, to society, to the church, and to the state. A well-settled belief like this is significant, and deserves the attention of all intelligent men whatever the truth may be found to be.

It is affirmed that members of secret orders are in danger of dissipation. Coming as they do from their lodge halls late at night or in the early hours of morning, when reputable places of resort are closed, the members are subjected to dangerous and oftentimes fatal temptations.

Evil men have great power over young and innocent comrades; and many a young man has become a physical, mental, spiritual, financial wreck because of association with some of these evil men in secret lodges. Only a few days ago a lady, now gaining a livelihood as a nurse, who had no knowledge at all of any movement against secret orders, chanced to pick up a copy of "The Christian Cynosure." Glancing at it a moment she said: "That paper condemns what destroyed my home. My husband was a merchant with a good business and he was a good man. He joined the Masons, took to drink, lost his property, and now is an outcast. I do not know where he is." This is only one case of many.

The secret societies in colleges are in certain cases little but centers of vicious indulgence. All will remember that the members of two of the Harvard fraternities were fined for maintaining a liquor nuisance last spring; and a student of that institution told me that the other fraternities hired wagons and rushed their stock of liquors over into Boston to remain until the vigilance of the police was relaxed. The obligation to aid, assist, and conceal the secrets of brethren tends to break down self-reliance; and to make men yield to temptation.

not require argument to show that orders which lead their members into evil habits are dangerous to the state.

Aside from this tendency to injure individuals, secret societies are deadly enemies of the home. Speaking of the clubs in which men more and more spend evenings and holidays a lady recently said: "We women are being clubbed to death." By the law of nature man gives himself to the outer world, and woman to the home. He labors in the field; she in the house. The evening time is, for the vast majority of families, the only season when father, mother, and children may sit together in the blessed harmony of home. All who have thought at all on the subject know that saloons, clubs, and lodges in our day have largely destroyed this only meeting ground of the home circle. Women give themselves to home duties all day; husbands are away at business. Women care for the children at night; husbands are away at lodge or club, smoking, drinking, or associating with such companions as they may have selected. It is no wonder that divorces are steadily and rapidly increasing under such conditions. There must be homes that there may be families and there is no home when the husband comes to his family only to eat and sleep, seeking his pleasures away from wife and child, and denying them the companionship which, under the law of nature, is their right.

That Christian churches are robbed and disintegrated by lodges is also so plain as to require little more than a statement. The secret society of our day, political, religious, patriotic, industrial, or social, has an altar. It has a code of morals; and it promises in terms more or less obscure that persons who worship at its altar and conform to its code shall be saved from hell, that is, go to the Grand Lodge above. The code does not require men to confess or forsake sin, nor to believe in Jesus Christ. The code of morals insists that they pay their dues and do good to the members of the order. It is obvious that men who believe that they can attain heaven in the next world and live in sin in this; that they can satisfy law by giving to those who will give to them, by protecting those who will protect them; and that incidentally they can make money and secure office, it is obvious, I say, that men who believe these things are not likely to repent of their sins, abandon them, and

find a home in the church. We should not expect them to do so, and, in fact, we find that they do not.

66

A successful evangelist recently said: 'In a thousand converts I get not one Mason, and I have never known a Knight Templar to be converted." Here is a simple plain explanation of the fact that our churches are filled so largely with women and children; and that of the male members so few are prayer meeting men. The proportion of men who spend Sabbath morning smoking, and reading the Sunday papers constantly increases. Such men do not labor and pray for the salvation of souls. When we see how completely lodges are separating the male population of the United States from the Christian churches, it is a wonder that the ministry do not as a matter of self-interest, aside from their duty to perishing souls, explain to their congregations the character of these societies, which propose to send men to heaven without either repentance, confession, or faith.

In addition to the ruin wrought in personal character and the crippling of the church, there is imminent danger of anarchy in civil affairs as a result of secret society influence. The World Almanac for '92 reports for the preceding year over five thousand murders in the United States. It reports about one hundred twenty-five legal executions and one hundred ninetytwo lynchings; the latter being largely in the South where negroes were the victims. It is well understood that if a criminal has means, it is difficult to convict; and there are many who believe that Freemasonry and similar societies are continually causing miscarriages of justice. Members of these orders, however, deny that lodges corrupt courts; and affirm that in cases where members of secret associations steal public moneys or commit other crimes and go unpunished, the lodge is not their protector. Under such circumstances it is needful to examine the obligations of the orders; and the slightest inquiry shows at once that whether these orders do protect criminals or not, they are well adapted to do so. The oath to conceal a brother's secrets and to recognize his signal of distress are such obligations as a bad man would wish to use in case of legal difficulty.